A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

November 11, 2006

It’s practically a constant of human nature to bypass a system of one’s own limitations. Man was born without wings, yet he flies. Not to sound so high and mighty, but we see this all the time in society and political atmospheres. When the social system is insufficient to your needs – you bypass it or take over the system or change it from within. To bypass it is to break the law. Immediately we think breaking the law is inherently unjustified. But it should be no mystery that when a person is in a situation where, despite their best efforts, society does not fullfill their basic needs. When a man has tried the unemployment line, when he’s tried to apply to welfare and financial help, and when he’s tried all the legal recourses at his disposal and when all those attempts fails – he is justified in breaking the law. It is the conundrum that an illegal act against an illegal system is thus, a justified act. It is the conundrum of commiting an immoral act so as not to commit a more immoral act, is thus a moral act – or at least a morally permissible one. For instance, stealing bread (an immoral act) in order to feed one’s family is a morally permissible act because letting your family die is much more immoral than stealing.

When politics doesn’t do what we request of it, we rebel and then we revolt. When nature doesn’t allow us to do what we desire, we build contraptions to bypass those biological limitations. It is our ingenuity and our unrelentless determination to be more than what limits us that makes us human.